I've Come to Declare (the beauty of the Lord)

My fiancée Amy talked me into making this 'blogspot'. I'm a pretty busy guy, but maybe this will be a fun way to step back from the daily grind and see things from a different perspective.

I'm so blessed to have someone as awesome as Amy in my life. She's seriously THE COOLEST girl ever...seriously. I'm so glad that she's not the type of girl that makes us go to expensive restaurants in Dallas for Valentine's Day...the only experience I have with taking her to an expensive restaurant is when we were in Memphis, we went to some fondue place that ended up being not that good anyway. So this year, we went to East Rock which is this Chinese buffet place in Greenville. She and I both liked the food, but I thought it was funny that they had a little dollar store setup by the entrance - you could buy jewelry and fake Rolexs - very amusing. We saw a movie after our Chinese dinner, then called it an evening. And she got me Guitar Hero III which automatically makes her even more awesome (not that everyone didn't already know that she's awesome). So basically I have this awesome girl that likes to have fun...I win!

I've been at my job for a little over a month and it's going well; still adjusting to the different personalities of the people that I work with. I think that I come off as a 'know-it-all' sometimes, so I definitely try to keep myself in check with that so I don't get on anyone's bad list.

Photography is something that I've been trying to get into for the past 5-6 months or so. It's harder to find time to do that now with work all day-pretty much the only time I get to shoot anything with good lighting is on the weekend. I got to do a senior portrait shoot with Amy for her sister, Ashton. That was the first opportunity I had to spend a few hours taking pictures of a person, and it was a lot of fun! The more I learn about taking pictures, the more things I want to try to make mine look better. That is one thing I think about a lot...the idea of art in general. Some people say that a good picture is just the artist's interpretation of reality, not a perfect reproduction of reality. I agree with that, but it's hard because I'm extremely analytical. Being analytical is a good trait for someone wanting to be an engineer, but it's not cool for someone trying to be an artist. Sometimes I think "what's even the point of taking a picture of something, who cares?" or "what's the point of a song, or music, or anything artistic? What's the functionality of it?" I think I focus too hard on the function and performance of something rather than its artistic value.

I think I look at art the same way that people deal with math or engineering, which isn't good at all. I look at everyday things like Amy's A/C in her car...the fan level switch goes from 0 to 4; a normal person just turns it to 0 if they're cold and 4 if they're hot, but there I go thinking about volumetric flow rates and cubic feet per minute and freestream air velocities and densities and if I turn it to 2, is that twice the flow rate of when it's turned to 1? So pretty much I'm crazy. I way over-analyze art the same way too, and that ruins the enjoyment of it for me a lot. I used to do that a lot with worship music at church - in my head I'd be thinking about how I didn't like the mix of the audio or how the guitarist looked goofy because he was wearing sunglasses inside or a million different other things than what was important-worshipping. So maybe that's something that I'll think about this weekend and in the weeks to come...how can I stop being so critical of art and just enjoy it for what it is? Man, if you can do that, don't take it for granted because I don't see that being something that would change for me overnight.

Amy and I got our Marriage License today at the courthouse; I'm excited about getting married! Every now and then I think about how crazy it is that everything is actually happening and this is for real, and I have my best friend to live it with.